There seems to be very little info regarding SITs... or the info is very well hidden. Any searches through the index on Simple Instrument Tracks or Instrument Tracks or any of the other things I tried comes up with nothing except how to put one into the project and some vague general blurbs on basic usage. I'm starting to realize why they confused me so much when I first started out... the info just isn't there.

sharke

You're right, it doesn't make any sense when you take the reasons for cloning a track into consideration.  

There maybe reasons/situations were this is the desired behavior. I don't clone SIT so I couldn't offer an explanation or example.

But from being here in the beginning when simple instrument tracks first showed up, before I use them in my project, I consider first where is this project going.

If the project I am starting on is a last phase project, I don't use SIT because I know at some point I will have to convert that SIT to a regular softsynth. So I start with all outputs and on and on, with the SS of choice.

However if I just heard something in my head and want a quick scratch pad so to speak, I have no problem using SIT with it's limitations.

Well the forum just completely ate my post. WTH? Anyway... the gist of it was it is next to impossible to find any in depth info on SITs in the manual.
 
@jb... If it's linked to the same synth the audio section of the clone should still remain independent ideally. I can understand the MIDI portion of it but why would the volume fader or MSR buttons not be independent? It's just bizarre.
 
Edit: And now my post appears. lol

Beepster
Well the forum just completely ate my post. WTH? Anyway... the gist of it was it is next to impossible to find any in depth info on SITs in the manual. @jb... If it's linked to the same synth the audio section of the clone should still remain independent ideally. I can understand the MIDI portion of it but why would the volume fader or MSR buttons not be independent? It's just bizarre. Edit: And now my post appears. lol

It is not linked to the same synth, it IS the same synth. It cannot remain independent. There is only one audio out, one synth. You can't have two volume or MRS for the same synth.

If you look at the reference in my earlier post, it's in the manual under "copy tracks" (page 120). If you clone a S.I.T. It only clones the MIDI portion of the S.I.T., and the MIDI track is still linked to the original soft synth. It does not insert a separate synth.

Good explanation jb101. Only the midi data is duplicated and all controls are manipulating a single synth on a single audio channel. So there's no way to show it in the track pane without seeing the duplicate controls. Got it. Thanks.

jb101

Beepster
Well the forum just completely ate my post. WTH? Anyway... the gist of it was it is next to impossible to find any in depth info on SITs in the manual. @jb... If it's linked to the same synth the audio section of the clone should still remain independent ideally. I can understand the MIDI portion of it but why would the volume fader or MSR buttons not be independent? It's just bizarre. Edit: And now my post appears. lol

It is not linked to the same synth, it IS the same synth. It cannot remain independent. There is only one audio out, one synth. You can't have two volume or MRS for the same synth.

If you look at the reference in my earlier post, it's in the manual under "copy tracks" (page 120). If you clone a S.I.T. It only clones the MIDI portion of the S.I.T., and the MIDI track is still linked to the original soft synth. It does not insert a separate synth.

So it's only cloning the MIDI section... not the audio portion. It's not truly "cloning" the SIT then. It's just treating it like a regular MIDI track... or at least that's the impression I'm getting. Meh. Weird issue.

It is clearly stated in the manual that this is how it works. It's not really an issue.

I'm just saying that being used to dealing with audio tracks when I clone something the whole thing gets cloned including inserted VSTs. Then everything can be manipulated separately from the original. I've looked at SITs as single unit that is a mix of MIDI and audio so to me logic would state that cloning the SIT would clone both the MIDI and the audio as well as the synth or I guess another (incorrect) way I thought it might work if the synth wasn't being cloned that the audio portion would be cloned but point to the synth in the synth rack (and yes I realize now that's not how it works). It just doesn't fit the description of a clone to me. I wasn't using the word "issue" to mean bug. If that's the way it was designed then that's the way it was designed. It's still kind of weird and confusing.
 
No biggie... well not to me anyway.

Hi folks,
I don't think it's working as the manual states (cloning only the MIDI track to the same synth)...at least not on my system. Here's what happens when I try it:
 
1. I create a project and create one S.I.T. That is the only track in the project. The synth that is associated with it shows up on both the track and the synth rack.

2. I clone the track

3. I end up with two new tracks, one MIDI and one synth output track. There is, as expected, no corresponding additional synth. So far this is mostly as the manual seems to state with the exception of the additional synth output that is created.

4. Here's the strange part. Now I have two synth output tracks (these are just audio tracks with their inputs set to the same output of the synth), and both of them are linked. Move the fader on one, and both move. Adjust the pan on one and the other one gets adjusted.
 
This is not the way things normally behave. If I insert a synth into the rack and create two tracks and assign the inputs to both of them to the same synth output they certainly aren't linked.
I understand that jb101 has been saying that cloning a S.I.T. only clones the MIDI track which is then routed to the same synth, but that's not how it working when I try it...
 
Dean

jb101
It is clearly stated in the manual that this is how it works. It's not really an issue.

Of course it's an issue. With all due respect, the fact that it's stated in the manual does not mean that this is how it should work. It could well mean that they didn't have time to fix it before the release, and so they put that in there as a sneaky kind of "warning." There are a lot of things in Sonar that just plain don't work properly or don't work as expected. 
 
And it's all very well to say "I can't imagine why that would be the expected behavior but I guess someone knows." The thing is, instrument tracks were clearly designed to make using soft synths as simple as audio tracks, in that one track = one instrument. Let's say you're mixing a tune with live drums, live guitar, live vocals and a soft synth bass. The whole point of S.I.T.'s is to give that instrument track equal status with the audio tracks, and that's how it should be when you're mixing. It's the equivalent of mixing a real synth that's plugged into an audio track. The whole connection to the soft synth is hidden from view, so that you can treat it like an audio track. The MIDI data on the track is the musical part, i.e. the equivalent of the audio waveform. If you didn't want to treat that soft synth like an audio track, then you wouldn't create an instrument track in the first place. So it stands to reason that cloning an instrument track should be exactly like cloning an audio track, i.e. you end up with a completely new independent track that's identical as the first one, with the added step of creating a new instance of the synth the first one was connected to. In an ideal world (if Sonar was 100% finished) then the clone dialog would let you choose which way to do it, but I truly believe that the vast majority of users would need a cloned instrument track to be independent of the original. 
 
Think about it this way. If all you wanted was another MIDI track connected to the same synth that a S.I.T. is already connected to, then why wouldn't you just create a new MIDI track and output it to that synth? The audio is still going to come out of the S.I.T.